You are much stronger than you think you are. Trust me. – Superman
📸 by @wearesandpit
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Dan Flavin : the architecture of light : Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin by Flavin, Dan, 1933-; Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Deutsche Guggenheim
The initiative to publish certain entries from The Guggenheim's vast library began with 65 catalogs published in 2012, and has now grown to 205 titles. This joins 43 titles available in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Online Reading Room, 281 from Getty Publications' Virtual Library, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art MetPublications's whopping 1,611 books you can download for free. That's in addition to the 375,000+ high resolution images of the artworks themselves the Met dumped into the public domain earlier this year.
Here's a taste of the stunning spreads from the Guggenheim's archives.
Roy Lichtenstein by Waldman, Diane; Lichtenstein, Roy, 1923-1997; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.); Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Roy Lichtenstein by Waldman, Diane; Lichtenstein, Roy, 1923-1997; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.); Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
The Aztec empire by Solís Olguín, Felipe R; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (Mexico); Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (Mexico); China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts by Lee, Sherman E.
Mark Rothko, 1903-1970 : A Retrospective by Rothko, Mark; Waldman, Diane Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Paul Klee, 1879-1940 : a retrospective exhibition by Klee, Paul ; Grohmann, Will
Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele by Messer, Thomas M ; Dobai, Johannes ; Comini, Alessandra
Toshio Iwai. Photo from Mediascape by Klotz, Heinrich; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe; Guggenheim Museum Soho
Download books from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's internet archive to your heart's content here.
In a landmark decision announced in Tokyo yesterday the Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association – a consortium of nine major plumbing manufacturers that includes Toto, Panasonic and Toshiba – agreed to standardise the iconography used on control panels for toilets.
If the posters of today still had the look of those of yesteryear, would they still get tagged and trolled as often? Much work today, it seems, lacks the graphic audacity of yore, opting instead for forms and formats we've become accustomed to. That's why, when you find vintage posters in flea markets, you find prices that might suggest they were just printed.
Many of these posters are available online, but it's often difficult to find high enough quality to print them beyond standard A4 printer paper sizing. Finally, our savior: FreeVintagePosters.Com. The name explains the concept rather well. From Soviet propaganda posters and advertisements for airlines of the 60s, it's up to you—there are several categories ranging from "Sport" to "Film" to "Nature" and everywhere in between. At Creators in France, we've been redecorating. Check out a few of our favorites below:
Joe Hisaishi, the composer who put music to nearly all of Hayao Miyazaki's 11 feature films, once remarked in an interview that, "Many of his works have flying scenes and flying has always been the dream of human beings." In fact, few artists have so successfully captured how the imagination defies gravity than the My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke director. A new film essay by Zach Prewitt gathers some of the 76-year-old director and producer's finest flights of fancy into a rejuvenating three-minute video.
Miyazaki, who recently announced he was coming out of retirement (again!), explains the paradox of his love for military airplanes and his hatred of war in the video below. While little is known about the narrative of his upcoming film, currently titled Boro the Caterpillar, an ending in which the protagonist transforms into a butterfly and attains flight would align with Miyazaki's fascination with airships, fantastical insect-winged aircraft, flying castles, and early 20th century aircraft. All of the above and more stretch their wings and take to the skies in Prewitt's Fandor-produced video which you can watch below.
Hidden Folks is an awesome looking interactive and miniature searching game that I came across via Supersonic Art Submissions. Every bit of it is hand drawn by illustrator Sylvain Tegroeg and programmed by game designer Adriaan de Jongh. All sounds you hear during gameplay originate from the mouths of creators. And, one of the coolest things about the game I think, is that there are no time limits or any points. Just areas teeming with people and objects to find!
The Oregon Trail is synonymous with "edutainment"—that beloved genre of games that makes learning fun. The game, a simulation of a 19th century family's westward trek to Oregon, is famous to the point of parody. Every American school student of the past 30 years has fond (traumatic?) memories of oxen dying, wagons catching fire, loved ones drowning in the Green River, and hunters shooting 1,200 pounds of food but only carrying 100 pounds back to the wagon.
Three Minnesotan public school teachers created The Oregon Trail in 1971. At the time, computers were new to education; there were no monitors, and students played the first version of the game on a teletypewriter—an electromechanical typewriter that could communicate, via phone line, with a large, mainframe computer. The game was text-based and paper-based; a student would type out his or her commands on a roll of paper, and the computer would respond by typing back status updates.
Motherboard tracked down all three original creators—Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger—to learn about the humble beginnings of their iconic game. Here is the origin story of The Oregon Trail, in their own words.
“We would send renderings of Superman, and we would get images back from Warner Bros. with his crotch area circled, ‘Make this part bigger; make this part smaller.’ This went on for months. Somebody trying to get the right balance of, 'Well, I can see he’s got something but we don’t want to make it too big,’“ says the team leader. For Kurtin, this was business as usual at DC. "I have entire stories of having to do with … junk. It’s just ridiculous.””
- A key challenge in making a Superman video game: properly rendering Superman’s crotch.
Lord of the Flies Group, Michael Tunk and John Vochatzer. All images courtesy of the artists
Amidst his series of shadowy cowboy collages, artist Michael Tunk has teamed up with John Vochatzer to make Lord of the Flies, a collage series that as the name suggests, reimagines your favorite group of British boys stranded on an island as amalgamated paper cutouts.
The collaboration consists of seven stark portraits of William Golding’s lost boys, collaged primarily from medical magazine illustrations drawn by Frank Netter over half a century ago. The meticulous creations manage to be visually alluring while also possessing a degree of uncanny valley eeriness, a paradoxical feel reminiscent of the collaged figures in the music video for Franz Ferdinand’s 2004 single "Take Me Out."
Johnny The Beast Master
Ralph, the chief of the boys, is depicted with a floral and aviary head arrangement and turtle shell shoulder pads, while his legs are wrapped in diaper-like casts. The physically frail Simon is depicted with a sickly-green face, large, drooping bug eyes, and infected scars. Flashes of his body reveal womanly breasts and an oversized hand covered in oozing scars and cuts. These are not flattering or romanticized portraits, nor are they grounded in a familiar reality; these are humorous and allegorical depictions of these fictional and often savage characters.
Chief Ralph The Golden Boy
Tunk and Vochatzer’s Lord of the Flies marks the first time the two artists have come together for a concrete project rather than “goofing around or brainstorming potential ideas,” as Vochatzer tells The Creators Project. “The series grew organically out of the process of just toying around with images and cut-outs in an attempt to get some collaborative rhythm going.”
Almost by chance, the pair suddenly stumbled upon the potential for something more cohesive. “Tunk had this giant stack of these Frank Netter magazines from the 80s in his studio that I always ogle each time I’m over there, and one day, we started building figurative pieces based off all these outdated pediatric illustrations,” adds Vochatzer. “That, combined with our penchant for natural history and the inherent pieced-together aesthetic of collage art, made these characters that had a real post-civilization and feral-children vibe, so we decided to just keep going with that.”
Simon The Visionary
The decision to frame the project around Lord of the Flies, however, wasn’t an entirely arbitrary decision. “Although it’s a timeless concept, I think the story of lost or abandon children trying to reconstruct some semblance of mythology and civilization is more pertinent now than ever, considering the fragility of times we live in,” says Vochatzer. “Collage, in itself being a reassembling of the often-forgotten fragments of culture and history, is, in a way, the perfect means to communicate this.”
Levi The Leper
Roger The Sadist
Piggy
Jack The Leader of the Choir
View Lord of the Flies and more of Michael Tunk and John Vochatzer’s collages on their respective Instagram pages, here and here.
Conceived for the Rijksmuseum's International Rijksstudio Award, the Limonov writes the series is built on the idea that, "When night begins and the museum halls turn empty, the art masterpieces stay awake and look from the darkness." Not only might having a masterpiece so close by inspire a masterful dream, but the open eyes of the art-inspired bedroom couture protects your slumber.
If you've ever thought that hanging on a museum wall might be restful, the eyes you can borrow include Vincent van Gogh's Self-Portrait with a Grey Felt Hat, Portrait of Alida Christina Assink by Jan Adam Kruseman, and, appropriately, Rembrandt's The Night Watch. "I chose the best known and most expressive characters who have the most recognizable striking look," Limonov tells The Creators Project. "And also that differ from each other in style and technique of painting." Limonov and his company, the Shuba Gift Factory, hope to expand the project to other museums, depending on the results of the Rijkstudio Award in April.
Conceived for the Rijksmuseum's International Rijksstudio Award, the Limonov writes the series is built on the idea that, "When night begins and the museum halls turn empty, the art masterpieces stay awake and look from the darkness." Not only might having a masterpiece so close by inspire a masterful dream, but the open eyes of the art-inspired bedroom couture protects your slumber.
If you've ever thought that hanging on a museum wall might be restful, the eyes you can borrow include Vincent Van Gogh's Self-Portrait with a Grey Felt Hat, Portrait of Alida Christina Assink by Jan Adam Kruseman, and , appropriately, Rembrandt's The Night Watch. While the idea of wearing someone else's face can be creepy, these masks make the serial killer trope tasteful.
Entomological species are an indispensable and vital kind, often unobserved and ignored by the hectic human world surrounding them. Multidisciplinary artist Géza Szöllősi’s alien-like insect sculptures are less easy to ignore. In his Kitin project, Szöllősi transforms fragile segments of dissected insects into art pieces that resemble robotic toys. “My current Kitin series recalls my childhood when it was difficult to get hold of Western action hero toys so I fabricated them myself from materials that were at hand,” Szöllősi tells The Creators Project.
He continues, “I grew up in the 80s on the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain. There were, of course, a few Western products that nevertheless made it through to the country but they were very expensive compared to the salaries of the time. We even watched Hollywood movies on illegally copied VHS. I was certainly impressed by that visual world. I wanted to design and make them.”
Each peculiar figure is meticulously constructed from parts of various beetles. The large compound eyes, wispy antennae, and slender proboscises of the insects give Szöllősi’s small sculptures a sci-fi and otherworldly appearance. “I dismantle the bugs' thorax and abdomen. They get sorted into groups and then just like with a robot, I attach one part to another until I have the finished piece,” Szöllősi explains.
“The crafty bit of it all is to look over the hundreds of bug parts and decide which one comes after the other. I do not know in advance what kind of a character it will turn out to be as I cannot fully control the process. Unlike Lego blocks, parts here are not compatible with each other. The greatest advantage of the montage technique is that even the creator is surprised by the finished piece,” he says.
Each sculpture is an expression of Szöllősi’s appreciation for organic materials and his ability to reimagine natural structures and concepts. “Working with organic materials usually divides the audience. It is not intended to be a provocation though. Organic materials—be it raw meat, fur, the exoskeleton of a bug or bone—serve as materials for my works purely because of their infinite resolution, minute details, and prefabricated nature. At the end, a metamorphosis occurs where the old and new entities simultaneously appear. A sculpture is especially good when those reflect controversy or inevitability,” Szöllősi explains.
“The various preservation techniques (formaldehyde, plasticization, or synthetic resin) all provide both visual and contextual bonuses. Resin gives the opportunity to play exciting optical games although, originally, it emerged as a storage material. I want to create objects which slightly disturb with their very existence but make one feel a prickly sensation in the stomach! What the heck!”
The park will feature solely naturally-sourced hot spring water. Credit: ONSEN Tourism Department, City of Beppu
Most people who post videos on Youtube hope to make a big splash. The mayor of Beppu, Japan did just that, with a promotional video for a spa-themed amusement park that he promised would be built if the video received one million views.
The video became an overnight viral hit and now has nearly three million views. The two-minute clip is full of slapstick humor, with toweled men and women riding rollercoasters and carousels that have been modified so that the seats are one-person bathtubs. Everyone looks like they’re having the time of their lives, but it begs the question, can this thing become real?
According to a representative of the city’s tourism division, on behalf of Mr. Shinichiro Eto, the answer is yes.
“We didn’t think it would be easy to get million views, but we believed that we would manage to make it,” says the representative, Ms. Abe. “However, it was unexpected to make it within only four days.”
A happy couple’s ice cream cone is about to be ruined. Credit: ONSEN Tourism Department, City of Beppu
The video was filmed at Beppu Rakutenchi, an already-existing amusement park in Beppu which will serve as the foundation for the new project. The seemingly random spa theme is actually inspired by the city’s wealth of bathable hot spring water, which they boast to be the largest in the world. The release of the video was timed with Onsen Academia, a symposium with the goal of deepening public knowledge about the springs. So although it seems like a joke, the spamusement park aims to be a symbol of civic pride.
The Spamusement park will open in July 2017. Credit: ONSEN Tourism Department, City of Beppu
“For the residents in Beppu, especially the young, we would like them to re-recognize that Beppu is a great city that we are proud of,” says Ms. Abe.
As expected, at this point details on the construction are still scarce. Budget, water footprint, and cost of entry are still being decided, but the city has created a special task force to tackle the project, which they hope to open in July of 2017.
Beppu City Credit: ONSEN Tourism Department, City of Beppu
“Now the world is watching us, so numerous tourists will come to Spamusement Park,” says Ms. Abe. “We will build the Spamusement Park so that everyone, not only Beppu citizens, but people from all over the world can enjoy!”
Click here to read Beppu Mayor Yasuhiro Nagano's statement about the video reaching over 1 million views.
Akira Production Report (1988) / Line Tests / 24fps ‘in ones’
Amazing line tests from the ‘Akira Production Report’ documentary. 30 years on, Akira is still the only hand-animated feature film to adopt such a high frame rate.
Andrew Wardle has been a virgin his entire life, but it's not because he hasn't had luck with the ladies. The 40-year-old UK resident has had a girlfriend for four years, but the two have never had sex because Wardle was born without a penis due to a rare medical condition.
Now, after sharing his story on the TLC documentary, The Man with No Penis, and undergoing more than 100 surgeries, Wardle is set to finally get laid thanks to his new "bionic penis."
As a baby, Wardle received corrective surgery for his ectopic bladder, which formed outside of his body, but the operation prevented him from ever developing a penis. He thought he would have to endure life without one until Mohammad Abad, a British man who lost his penis in a childhood accident, had the experimental technology installed in 2012.
Like Abad's, Wardle's new penis was created using skin, muscle, and nerve grafts from his arms and fitted with cylinders that fill with fluid when pumped from a small sac installed in his ball sac, which is how he'll get an erection. However, doctors will have to go in and essentially turn the rig on, a process that will leave Wardle in the hospital for three days and give him an boner that will last two long weeks.
On Wednesday, Wardle told the hosts of British television show This Morning that he'll spend those two weeks inside so as not to show the world the rocket that will be in his pocket. Speaking of which, he also told the hosts he did not get to select the size of his new member, which seems like a major oversight in the way bionic phalluses are constructed.
Once the robo-cock is switched on and his two-week erection dies down, Wardle will be able to have sex with his girlfriend, Fedra Fabian, for the first time. She revealed on the show that the two had been dating for nine months before she found out about his condition and she read about it in the newspaper. "I didn't know how to react to it," she said.
For a man who is about to finally lose his virginity after four decades, you would think Wardle would be a peaceful guy, but he's already started a feud another dude who also has a pneumatic dick. Wardle had some harsh words for Abad, who lost his virginity to a famous sex worker and said recently that he wants to date a sex robot.
"This is a taxpayer-funded operation—the money spent on it was not so he could sleep with a prostitute," Wardle said Friday.
Yes, that's right, the National Health Service paid for both operations, making it entirely free. Americans live in a country where healthcare premiums cost an arm and a leg. Over in the UK, they're just handing out bionic dongs for free so that middle-aged men don't have to be virgins anymore. How can we get on that health plan?
Lord of the Flies Group, Michael Tunk and John Vochatzer. All images courtesy of the artists
Johnny The Beast Master
Chief Ralph The Golden Boy
Simon The Visionary
Levi The Leper
Roger The Sadist
Piggy
Jack The Leader of the Choir
Images courtesy the artist
Images courtesy the artist
The park will feature solely naturally-sourced hot spring water. Credit: ONSEN Tourism Department, City of Beppu
A happy couple’s ice cream cone is about to be ruined. Credit: ONSEN Tourism Department, City of Beppu
The Spamusement park will open in July 2017. Credit: ONSEN Tourism Department, City of Beppu
Beppu City Credit: ONSEN Tourism Department, City of Beppu
